MORE ABOUT LEARNING STYLES OF THE GIFTED

Published as G. B.Smith (1995) "More about learning styles of the gifted". Our Gifted Children 3.6, 7 - 10. Melbourne: Hawker Brownlow Education.

© Gregory Smith 1992

Abstract

"Each learner will have a personal set of favoured cognitive strategies; this constitutes the basis of leaning style."

Teachers need to be quite versatile in using a variety of methods of presentation, appropriate to the learners. In the long run, teachers of the gifted must aim to create independent learners.

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Everyone thinks and learns in different ways, and implicitly accepts different thinking and learning 'styles' as a fact of our birth.

The question is, how does this realisation affect our teaching? Do we just charge on hoping our students will learn our subject's distinctive methodology and put it down to bad luck if the student is at last unable to grasp data in its particular paradigm? Some may mistakenly regard such students as "not suited to this subject" or even terminal in it. Or perhaps we try to adapt to the needs and interests of the different students we meet each year, adapting the material to suit as best we can. No doubt this is how most of us approach the teaching task.

There is a third option however, to consider the starting point as the learners in themselves, the learner as a learner with a history of learning and perceiving and surviving. The individual has achieved something already and is in the process of achieving more, is in process and has already structured perceptions and learnings in a certain way already. Indeed, learners have a learning style although they may not be self-consciously aware of it.

There has been much research on learning styles theory. To clarify, strategies for learning are short term methods for learning which change with the time, the teacher and the situation. But abiding learning modes or styles can change over time. They are distinctively different from one another and are identified as having certain discernible characteristics. Our focus here is learning, or cognitive styles or 'learning styles' so called. These are abiding ways of dealing with new information, configuring it, processing data and structuring it to make sense of it.

Learning Styles of the Gifted

The teacher of the gifted especially must consider learning styles. In the learning context, we may well ask: How can the teacher of the gifted cater for many different styles? If gifted learners use many different learning styles, then why teach to cater for different learning styles anyway? Nonetheless it is important to be sensitive to the learning styles of our gifted.

Professional observations indicate that some styles are preferable for learning certain things and inevitably learners adopt the styles they are comfortable with. A corollary is true too: set ways of learning restrict further learnings, that inefficient learners may be using only one learning style. So, "The art of the teacher and the challenge for the student is to arrive at the mixture of activities which is most compatible with their basic aims." (Boud & Pascoe, 1978)

Educators have recently turned to cognitive style to explain the variations in learning success rather than "blame" either the effectiveness of teaching methods, which cerebral hemisphere is used, whether deductive or inductive methods are applied, what intelligence tests tells us, or which subject choices were made. Poor academic progress and underachievement is now sometimes explained as a mismatch of teaching and learning "styles". Learning styles theory can help us understand and eliminate such mismatches and help gifted learners become self directed.

Towards A Definition

Learning styles are the perceptual and cognitive skills and strategies the learner uses in gathering, interpreting and stowing information. Goldstein & Blackman define learning style as "the way we organise, compare and structure information that we have sensed and attended to before en coding it in our neutral circuits" (Langrehr p. 13). Others even distinguish the terms; they say cognitive styles are the consistent individual differences in ways of organising experiences into meanings, values, skills, and strategies whereas consistent individual differences in the ways of changing meanings, values, skills, and strategies are called learning styles (Brundage & MacKeracher, 1980). Broadly then, ability refers to the content and style refers to how we know.

Learning style is a value free concept; there is no best way to learn. Learning style theory avoids the unfortunate grading that comes from ability scales and any ranking according to class or gender hierarchies embedded in many other educational theories.

Herrmann's (1990) left or right hemisphere explanation offers two simple learning models. Inquiry can take the form of a linear, logical, sequential processing of left cerebral hemisphere rather than the holistic, patterned, " all at once" approach of the right hemisphere.

Learning style is a characteristic of the individual not just of the situation. Strategies (comprehension learning & operation learning) are not necessarily styles. Witkin (1977) found there are field independent/global/articulated learners (aware of needs, feelings, and attributes) who have a sense of separate identity, who can tolerate longer delays, who gamble, hypothesise, raise critical questions, pursue principles, etc.

Then there are the field dependent learners, with an operations style, who have a less well developed self-concept, who strive for safety or reduction of uncertainty, who value short cycle activities that yield tangible results, who are closer to the concrete, who see learning as a bit by bit assembly. Field dependent learners like essays, group work and reports, thematic projects, summaries, and creative products. Notably such learners are typically the disadvantaged.

We should clarify the terms: strategy and style and ability. Clearly learning styles theory has much to offer the educator of gifted though its theory and practice are still relatively new. It can provide diagnoses and a starting point for better, more individual and appropriate educational provisions.

An Overview of Learning Styles Research

One research project is the Learning Style Inventory (Fry & Kolb, 1979); it plots learners' preferences along two axes: concrete versus abstract, and active versus reflective. They identify four types:

• Convergers: lead to one or a few right answers, have narrow technical/scientific interests, are unemotional.
• Divergers; high on concrete experience and reflective observation, are emotional, interested in people, have broad interests.
• Assimilators: value inductive reasoning, show integration of knowledge,
• lean towards conceptualisation and reflective observation, create theoretical models, and their social interest is not strong.
• Accommodators are best at concrete experience and active experimentation, like doing things and taking risks, they adapt to existing circumstances, practise trial and error problem solving, and are socially "pushy".

Consequently, learning styles become highly individual in both direction and process. For example, "a mathematician may come to place great emphasis on abstract concepts, whereas a poet may value concrete experience more highly . . . "

Other features of personality are described by learning style research and has implications here. For example which kinds of reinforcement are effective, that the global style relies on external referents, whereas the field independent style relies on self defined goals; the field dependent is much more affected by criticisms than field independent people. They differ on how they use mediators in learning, in method and rate of concept attainment, in problem solving (the field dependent need more explicit instructions and cannot create a structure where there is none), and in cue salience (selecting suitable data for problem solving). Cognitive style even seems to indicate career paths and vocational interests.

Teachers too are either field dependent or field independent and show this in their work, for instance, whether they assume responsibility or share responsibility for the student learning. Field independent teachers use more questions in teaching. Parker & Bain note in this respect that matching leads to greater interpersonal attraction, that teachers were more accurate in their predictions when matched with their students than when mismatched, that the matching had a greater effect on successful strategies and behaviours. Clearly Witkin's research findings are relevant for teaching gifted and talented and for selecting matching staff.

Further, holism versus serialism (Pask and Scott 1972) is another research area of learning types. Serialists use string like sequences in which the elements are related at a low level of generality, whereas holists achieve a higher level of generalisation in which details are subsumed. Pask and Scott argue for the existence of distinct styles of learning - comprehension learning and operation learning - which in their extreme forms are shown as holist and serialist strategies both in trying to understand and in 'teaching back' what has been learned. The holist tends to make more elaborate hypotheses, looks further ahead, builds up a picture of the whole task, looks for links with other topics and even relies on his or her own analogies and descriptions.

But the serialist prefers a narrower focus in learning, concentrating on simple hypotheses and step-by-step learning, paying attention to details and processes, but neglecting the broader perspective and links with other topics. Serialists are unlikely to make use of personal experience. Gifted students of course use both styles, usually have a versatile learning style; they usually use holist and serialist strategies as appropriate and in an effective sequence.

Cronbach (1967) approaches learning style from the aspect of learning rate and teacher adaptations to meet aptitude. He identifies two groups; constructives and defensives. He notes that constructives persist when in moderate risk, and defensives are most persistent when led to think the chance of success is very low (Feather, 1961). Like field dependent learners, it seems 'defensives' will learn most if the teacher spells out short term goals, gives a maximum of explanation and guidance, and arranges feedback at short intervals, in other words, if teacher maximises dependence.

A further project has been the study of cognitive and learning styles in gifted adults and children. Haensly, Reynolds & Nash (1986) point out that it is how such individuals process in formation which makes them different. They claim that at the heart of these differences lies the manner of mental processing that an individual uses most proficiently, that is, whether an analytic, sequential or a holistic, simultaneous style of processing of information or stimuli is habitual. In fact, they point out, the quality of some of the above outcomes, such as mathematical and musical, often depends on the complementary use of such types of processing.

Torrance and Reynolds (1978) have indicated that individuals exhibit different styles of learning and processing information, not only through their preference but also through the efficiency with which they use one or the other style and in knowing when to employ one style or the other. They have devised an instrument to identify it, Your Style of Learning and Thinking, available both for adults (Torrance et al., 1977) and for children (Reynolds et al., 1979).

Not surprisingly then Haensly et al. recognise a constant balance between convergence and divergence and between analysis and synthesis in a gifted learner, a finding which only goes to show that no one style is better but is just one proficiency among many. It is just that better learners know when to adapt.

Mumford (1986) identified four styles: Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist:

• Activists learn best from activities where they can engross themselves in short here and now activities, such as business games, competitive teamwork tasks and role playing exercises. They learn less well from activities where they are required to engage in solitary work, that is, reading, writing and thinking of their own.
• Reflectors learn from activities where they have the opportunities to review what has happened and what they have learned. They learn less well when they are involved in situations which require action without planning.
• Theorists learn from activities where what is being offered is part of a system, a model, concept or theory. They learn less well when they are involved in unstructured activities where ambiguity and uncertainty are high.
• Pragmatists learn best from activities where there is an obvious link between subject matter and the problem or opportunity on the job. They learn less well when the learning event seems to be all theory and general principle, distant from their reality.

He finds that individuals do have strong preferences. His concern was to establish a training course that suited the preferred Learning Style of the individual as an explicit way of helping participants to learn. He believes that time spent learning how to learn is as important as learning the course content. Ideally "we can now use the knowledge of individual preferences to design what is offered explicitly to meet different needs. . . So participants are given things more congruent with their preferences." Overall he finds however that it is better to mix styles than put people with predominant styles together.

To conclude this overview, it should be noted that much more research needs to be done. Toye (1989) suggests that more in-learner studies (that is, studies of the learner's changing internal states) are needed. Clearly learning styles theory has much to help the teachers of the gifted understand their students' sometimes puzzling attitudes. Better awareness of their habits of thinking can ensure that their teaching approach will be appropriately matched to the learning styles of their students.

Conclusions

The research offers various useful concepts that can be adopted in best teaching practice. Such concepts are now measurable. Witkin found that learners were stable in their preferred mode of perceiving even over many years, and even though modifications could occur, they brought the same cognitive style to bear on new learning opportunities. Pask (1975) called it an heuristic, a "cognitive fixity". Willing (1987) puts it well in his own way: "Each learner will have a personal set of favoured cognitive strategies; this constitutes the basis of leaning style."

So gifted children have a range of learning styles: they are serialists or holists, or both; constructives or defensives; divergers, convergers, assimilators or accommodators; activists, reflectors, pragmatists or theorists; and field independents or field dependents. We ought to take note of Pask's warning that extreme teaching styles could be markedly disadvantageous to students with a mismatched learning style. Teachers need to be quite versatile in using a variety of methods of presentation, appropriate to the learners. In the long run, teachers of the gifted must aim to create autonomous learners.

REFERENCES

Boud D. & Pascoe J. (1978). Experiential Learning American Consortium on Experiential Education.

Brundage, D.H. & MacKeracher, D. (1980). Adult Learning Principles and their Application to Program Planning. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Cronbach, L. J. (1967). How can instruction be adapted to individual differences? In R.M. Gagné (Ed.) Learning and Individual Differences (pp. 23-39). Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill.

Entwhistle, N.J. (1981). Styles of Teaching and Learning. Chichester: Wiley.

Haensly P., Reynolds C. R., & Nash, W.R. (1986). "Giftedness: coalescence, context, conflict, and commitment." In Sternberg, R.J., & Davidson J.E. (Eds.) Conceptions of Giftedness (pp. 128-148). Cambridge University Press.

Herrmann, N. (1989). The Creative Brain (2nd edition). North Carolina: Brain Books.

Honey P. & Mumford A. (1986). The Manual of Learning Styles Maidenhead, Berkshire .

Langrehr, J. (1980). Cognitive style: implications for the classroom" Pivot 7. 3, pp. 13-15.

Mumford, A. (1986). "The influences of learning styles on learning" Training and Development in Australia 13.2.7-9.

Packer, J. & Bain, J. D. (1980) . "Cognitive style and teacher student compatibility" Journal of Educational Psychology 70.5.864-871.

Pask, G. (1972). A fresh look at cognition and the individual International. Journal of Man-Machine Studies 4. 211-216.

Pask, G. (1975). Conversations, Cognition and Learning. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Schmeck, R.R., Geisler-Brenstein, E., & Cercy, S.P. (1991). Self-concept and Learning: the revised inventory of learning processes. Educational Psychology 11. 3, 343-362.

Smith, B. (1981) .Selecting appropriate teaching/learning styles" Training and Development in Australia 8.3, 12-14.

Toye, M. (1989) ."Learning Styles". In Titmus, C. J.. (Ed.) Lifelong Education for Adults (pp. 226-232). An International Handbook.

Willing, K. (1987). Learning strategies as information control Prospect 2.3, 273-291.

Witkin, H.A., Moore, C. A., Goodenough, D. R., & Cox, P. W. (1977). Field dependent and field independent cognitive styles and their educational implications Review of Educational Research 47 , 1-64.

See: "Accelerants learn best in themes" Our Gifted Children 3.4, 14-19. Melbourne: Hawker Brownlow Education.

and Gifted child in the community of inquiry

Webmaster G B Smith Last revised 10/01/08 This page is: home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/giftedstyles.html